Malabar Civet Coffee

Design: Akash Patil
Location: India
Project Type: Student Project
School: MIT Institute Of design, Pune
Tutor: Prof. Ranjana Dani/Prof. Vikram Kaushik
Packaging Contents: Coffee
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Kraft Paper
Printing Process: Offset printing

For centuries people admire coffee, The way it tastes, the way it smells. The atmosphere of a small morning coffee break became a beautiful tradition, a ritual for the majority of people. Developing countries have a huge demand for in-home coffee consumption. Earlier, India had been a producing country because the domestic consumption of coffee wasn’t too high. India is slowly but surely moving away from the obsession with instant coffee and people are beginning to understand how coffee is grown, processed, sourced, Gourmet coffee is also seeing a rise. This includes artisan, hand blends, and high-quality coffee, people are ready to try more regional blends. Indians have increasingly become Vocal for Local, basking in the glory of Native Pride, taking interest in the local produce. Youth is getting curious about the product’s origin and wants to know the whole coffee system.

“Civet Coffee”
India, Asia’s third-largest producer and exporter of coffee, has started producing the world’s most expensive coffee, made from the poop of a civet cat, on a small scale in the Coorg district of Karnataka. The Civet coffee, also called Luwak coffee, is expensive because of the uncommon method of producing such a coffee. It is produced from the coffee beans digested by the civet cat. The feces of this cat are collected, processed, and sold. It is highly-priced because it is claimed to be a more nutritious and high cost involved in sourcing the animal dropping, wastage during processing, and quality certification. Kopi luwak is a coffee that consists of partially digested coffee cherries, which have been eaten and defecated by the Asian palm civet. The cherries are fermented as they pass through a civet’s intestines, and after being defecated with other fecal matter, they are collected. Asian palm civets are increasingly caught in the wild and traded for this purpose.

Kopi luwak is produced mainly on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Java, Bali, Sulawesi, and East Timor. It is also widely gathered in the forest or produced in farms in the islands of the Philippines. Producers of the coffee beans argue that the process may improve coffee through two mechanisms: selection – civets choosing to eat only certain cherries, and digestion – biological or chemical mechanisms in the animal’s digestive tract altering the composition of the coffee cherries. Although kopi luwak is a form of processing rather than a variety of coffee, it has been called one of the most expensive coffees in the world, with retail prices reaching US$100 per kilogram for farmed and US$1,300 per kilogram for wild-collected beans. The taste of kopi luwak varies with the type and origin of excreted beans, processing, roasting, aging, and brewing.

India has started the production of this variety on a small scale in Karnataka’s Coorg district. The coffee is unique to the Malabar Coast of Karnataka, Kerala, and the Nilgiri mountains of Tamil Nadu and has protected status under India’s Geographical Indications of Goods Act. Coorg Consolidated Commodities (CCC), has decided to produce this coffee at a small scale in the country’s largest coffee-producing state. CCC has also decided to open a café to serve this coffee locally. The Malabar Coast is a region of the southwestern shoreline of the mainland Indian subcontinent.

Delivering reusable packaging
This packaging container is designed to be reusable as a coaster. Civet coffee is one of the most expensive coffees in the world and is available in small packages. The small size of the container can be used as the coffee packaging and a coffee coaster. It can be used in homes, offices, and also while traveling. It can also be used in cafes as coffee testers.